Comparative Literature Commons^™

En Quête D’Image(S) : L’Emploi Des Archives Pour La Construction D’Une Mémoire (Visuelle) Palestinienne, Charlotte Schwarzinger

Regards

By relying on the works of two Palestinian directors – one being a found-footage documentary and the other an experimental piece – this article examines the importance of archives in the elaboration of Palestinian visual memory. Through its complex cinematographic history and the “missing image / ‘invisibled’ image,” Palestinian creators today use the medium of film to bear witness to their presence. The author aims to think through the use of archives in this struggle against invisibility and toward the recognition of a history, a culture, and a memory that are constantly threatened by erasure. At the border between historical …

Iconoclasme, Blasphème Et Liberté De L’Art, Hassouna Mansouri

Regards

Based on two films – La Ricotta by Pier Paolo Pasolini and The Message by Mustapha Akkad – this paper examines the relationship between art and religion. At the core of this debate lies an opposition between two semiotic approaches, defined by Umberto Eco as in verbis and in factis. In dealing with works of art, I will highlight the connection between these two concepts and the idea of “The Open Work.” I will then argue that the conflict arises from a shift in the debate from aesthetics to politics, and thus revolves around a certain margin of tolerance …

الهامش باعتباره خياراً والتحلّي بالهشاشة مقابل العنف, Abdullah Al-Kafri

Regards

.قراءة في بعض ما يُقدَّم ضمن مشهد فنون الأداء في بيروت خلال عامي 2017 و2018

« Regards », Nouvelle Formule, Joseph Korkmaz

Regards

Après vingt ans d’existence, la revue Regards se métamorphose entièrement. D’une revue annuelle limitée à une diffusion interne et rédigée en grande partie par des enseignants et des étudiants de l’Institut d’Études Scéniques, Audiovisuelles et Cinématographiques (IESAV) de l’Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth (USJ), elle passe à une publication semestrielle et comprend désormais un comité scientifique et un comité de lecture internationaux. Elle s’ouvre également aux contributions de chercheurs et d’universitaires, aussi bien locaux qu’étrangers...

Mémoire Et Conflit Dans « Le Dernier Jour Du Printemps » (آخر يوم في الربيع" 2018") De Fidaa Zidan, Najla Nakhlé-Cerruti

Regards

Last Day of Spring (آخر يوم في الربيع" 2018") is a monodrama written and performed by Fidaa Zidan (فداء زيدان, b. 1989), premiered in July 2018 at the National Palestinian Theatre/El-Hakawati in Jerusalem. The play tells, in the first person, the story of a young girl from a Druze village in the Galilee who finds herself alone with her parents after the death of her brother during his military service in the Israeli army, compulsory for men of the Druze community in Israel since 1956, and who had been buried in a military cemetery. The sister wants to fulfil her …

La Mémoire Comme Ressource Et Enjeu De Lutte Dans Les Documentaires Syriens De L’Après 2011, Nicolas Appelt

Regards

In Syrian cinematographic creation – essentially documentary – which escapes the control of the regime, memory occupies an important place in the representation of the conflict that tears the country apart. Drawing from three Syrian documentary films shot after 2011 – Houses without Doors, 194, Us Children of the Camp and The Taste of Cement – we will put into perspective how the memory of one side is mobilized as a resource for representing the conflict, including after leaving Syria, and, on the other hand, how it is an issue in reclaiming the story of this conflict, in a …

De L’Historien Au Citoyen : Une Nouvelle Génération D’Artistes Libanais À La Conquête De La Réconciliation D’Après-Guerre, Joséphine Parenthou

Regards

Twenty-eight years after the ceasefire, the Lebanese civil war remains a constant theme for Beirut artworks and speeches, whereas society and institutions have made it a taboo. Art constitutes a fortunate entrance for apprehending the social world and its evolutions in a context of a long post-war period. The effectiveness of the reconciliation process, even its takeover by artworld actors, can be measured through unofficial paths. Moreover, the transformation of war social representations within the artworld, between a war generation and a post-war generation, reflects a redefinition of both the artist’s figure and function in its relationship to politics: formerly …

Decay As Political Metaphor In Ely Dagher's "Waves '98" And Mounia Akl's "Submarine", Joey Ayoub

Regards

Lebanese cinema serves as a useful tool with which to assess postwar dynamics given the dominance of the civil war in artistic production since 1990. As the first postwar generation reached adulthood, we have been witnessing the inevitable rise of a “second wave” of postwar Lebanese cinema – defined as the generation of filmmakers born towards the end of or after the civil war. This essay analyses two postwar Lebanese films, Ely Dagher’s 2015 Waves ’98 and Mounia Akl’s 2016 Submarine, as unique responses to a feeling of despair brought about by the city/nation, explored through the theme of …

Ya Omri (104 Wrinkles) De Hady Zaccak, Joseph Korkmaz

Regards

Elle est dure, la vieillesse. Simone de Beauvoir en sait quelque chose. Ici, l’âge de Henriette (104 ans), l’héroïne du film et grand-mère maternelle du réalisateur, ne laisse place à aucun euphémisme. Elle n’est pas une personne âgée, ni une femme d’un certain âge, mais bel et bien une vieille, et même une très vieille dame, car les stigmates des années vécues sont flagrants […]

Entretien Avec Hady Zaccak, Joseph Korkmaz

Regards

Pourquoi un film sur votre grand-mère ? Aviez-vous un rapport particulier avec elle ou vous vous êtes intéressé à elle parce qu’elle est un cas rare d’une centenaire encore alerte ? Quand est-ce que vous avez commencé à la filmer ?
Un film sur ma grand-mère car le documentaire est un moyen de lutter contre la mort et de préserver la mémoire de ceux qu’on aime […]

« Cinematheque Beirut » Entretien Avec Nour Ouayda, Yara Nashawaty

Regards

En juin 2018, Cinematheque Beirut, un projet dédié à la conservation de l’héritage cinématographique libanais, fut inauguré par l’association Metropolis Cinema. Ce dernier-né est sans doute son projet le plus ambitieux, car il résulte d’une multitude d’initiatives déjà mises en place par l’association et ne pourrait réellement évoluer qu’en s’inscrivant dans la durée. De plus, miser sur la préservation d’un héritage en danger relève d’une lourde responsabilité auprès d’un public souvent sceptique, témoin impuissant du bafouage, voire du sabotage, de son héritage culturel depuis le début de la guerre civile, puis durant la période dite de reconstruction dans les années …

Filming Against The System In North Africa: Pioneering Women Documentary Makers And Their Common Aesthetics, Stefanie Van De Peer

Regards

This article draws attention to the pioneering women of North African documentary making, and specifically their work in addressing the image of women on screen in rapidly changing societies. Highlighting the creativity of the filmmakers in defying the contemporary censor or addressing taboo topics such as women’s rights, the history of women contributing to politics, or women’s roles in the wars for independence, this article uncovers neglected “feminist” histories and the ways in which women documentary makers tackle audio-visually challenging topics. The films under discussion show their creative potential to address difficult themes through a poetics of permissibility. This is …

Tracing Trans Bodies In Neobaroque Literature, Huber David Jaramillo Gil

Publications and Research

This document briefly explores the ways in which trans people have been written through Baroque aesthetics in the social and cultural imaginary of Latin America, despite the various unjust forces that have attempted to make them invisible and exclude them from the national narrative. The differences between Severo Sarduy’s Neobaroque, Néstor Perlongher’s Neobarroso, and Pedro Lemebel’s Neobarrocho are analyzed, while exploring their individual limitations and potentialities for voicing the joys and pains of being trans in an exclusionary society.

The Child Ethnographer In The Field: Examples From English, Spanish, And French Caribbean Literature, Emily Ann O'Dell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation I consider the child to be an ethnographer in works of fiction and autofiction from the Caribbean islands. Through their liminality as culturally and developmentally betwixt or between, their cultural malleability, their linguistic fluidity, and their curiosity, the child becomes a "native" ethnographer who is capable of translating the culture (both linguistically and culturally) for the reader in order to establish understandings of Caribbean cultures. This is accomplished through the creation of hybridized or creolized texts that have many of the same characteristics as postmodern ethnographies.

In the English Caribbean Xuela provides an ethnographic perspective of Dominican …

Multiple Voices In The Poetry Of Transculturation: Reading Contemporary Ex-Phonic Poetry Through Muwaššah: Ryoko Sekiguchi, Etel Adnan, And Suheir Hammad, Thana Al-Shakhs

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research is a comparative study that compares two types of multicultural poetry: contemporary poetry written by non-native speakers and the Andalusian medieval genre of muwaššah. In spite of the cultural and temporal gap between the two periods, the poets apply similar strategies to represent multicultural voices, for example integrating foreign expressions. I argue that multicultural poetics break the rules of classical writing and use oral expressions that are more flexible to include different languages and cultural references. This study focuses on oral techniques that offer an appropriate style to express multiplicity.

This thesis is divided into four chapters. …

¡Che Gallego!: Relaciones Transatlánticas Entre Galicia Y Argentina En El Siglo Xx, Fabio Suárez Garcia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is focused on demonstrating the strong influence that Galician immigrants exerted on the Argentinian society at the beginning of the 20th century. In this transatlantic literary study, the bonds between the old and the new continent will be established by analysing some of the authors who became affected by immigration and exile conditions: Xosé Neira Vilas, Luis Seoane and Alfonso Rodríguez Castelao. The thesis will also examine the Argentinian literature related to immigration, and how some relevant authors accepted or rejected stereotyping. Both views, the one from exiles and the one from local authors, were …

Vulnerability And Resistance In Carmen Aguirre’S Mexican Hooker #1, Cinta Mesa

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, “Vulnerability and Resistance in Carmen Aguirre’s Mexican Hooker#1,” Cinta Mesa examines Chilean-Canadian playwright and actress Carmen Aguirre’s latest autobiographical novel, Mexican Hooker#1, to analyze Latina vulnerability in relation to exile, emigration, gender violence and stereotypes. The article relies upon Judith Butler’s definition of vulnerability (20), which is excluded from official texts. The consequences of these types of trauma, which are written on female bodies, are expressed through post-traumatic stress disorder. The author expresses the difficulty of acting because of her post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and the challenges she meets on her way to heal herself and …

Motherhood, Vulnerability And Resistance In The Elysium Testament By Mary O’Donnell, María Elena Jaime De Pablos

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Mary O’Donnell’s novel The Elysium Testament (1999) narrates the story of Nina, an accomplished grotto restorer, but a neglectful wife and mother according to the Irish patriarchal symbolic order –the “register of regulatory ideality” (Butler, Bodies that Matter 18). Estranged from her husband, Neil, she sends him a series of letters, her “testament,” where some of the most significant aspects of her life are exposed. Readers discover that Nina’s and Neil’s marriage begins to crumble after the birth of their second child, Roland, to whom Nina attributes a frightening dual nature, which she tries to control through physical and psychological …

Chase Riboud’S Hottentot Venus (2003) And The Neo-Victorian: The Problematization Of South-Africa And The Vulnerability And Resistance Of The Black Other, Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article touches upon issues of captivity, suppression, misrepresentations and exclusion of black people from a historical and cultural point of view through the analysis of Chase-Riboud’s neo-Victorian novel Hottentot Venus (2003). It also focuses on the implications and consequences for contemporary South Africa of situations of slavery and exploitation of African descended peoples. Notions of identity and moral and legal inclusion of black women into past and contemporary societies and communities will be also discussed from the point of view of postcolonial and gender and sexuality studies. The complexities of blackness and the violation of human rights as a …

The Commodified Body And Post/In Human Subjectivities In Frears’S Dirty Pretty Things And Romanek’S Never Let Me Go, Rocio Carrasco

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Following new materialist analysis, this article takes the body as the central locus of analysis, and relates it to broader questions such as ethics, ideology, power and/or technologies. Specifically, it revolves around the idea of embodied subjectivity as articulated by scholars Rosi Braidotti, Sherryl Vint or Cary Wolfe, whereby body and subjectivity are indissolubly and interestingly connected. Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go (2010) exploit the idea of the commodified body, understood here as a vulnerable body, a disposable commodity at the service of powerful and/or wealthy people. Victims of the cruelties inflicted …